Assignment - Palermo (21 page)

“When I tell you to.”

“Yo.”

“Gabriella, get out of the line of fire. Take Zio into the bathroom.”

“But you and O’Malley—”

“Do as I say. Joey, keep your gun ready.”

The little man nodded. The footsteps pounded up the steps again, then paused. Then there was a scraping sound. For several seconds no one breathed.

“Kronin!” Durell called.

There was a harsh laugh from the other side of the panel. “You have done my work well for me, Durell! You are exactly where I wanted to get you!”

“Now, Bruno,” Durell said quietly.

The big man backed up two steps and then hurled himself at the heavy planking. The door, for all its apparent solidity, was old and worm-eaten. There came a splintering crash, the squeal of old and rusty bolts

torn from the strap hinges. Bruno fell to his knees, his face anguished as the big door fell outward. He grabbed at his shoulder. “I busted it!”

But Durell did not hear. Light slammed into the room with almost physical force from beyond the broken doorway. Over Bruno’s huge bulk he saw Karl Kronin, tall and vulturine, his face startled. Behind him were two men in dark business suits. They were Chinese. All three were armed with machine pistols.

What followed came too fast to control. As the door smashed down and Bruno fell, Durell fired over him.

The shot was thunderous in the stone stairwell. Because of Bruno, he missed Kronin, but one of the Chinese fell backward down the stairs, his machine-pistol ripping a long blast of fire that stitched the air above Durell’s head. At that moment Gabriella came out of the bathroom with Zio. Kronin’s eyes widened, and his shot was aimed at either the girl or the old man—Durell was never sure which. O’Malley intervened. He cried out something in the confusion of rapid gunfire and leaped over Bruno’s big body, and Durell saw Kronin’s bullet smash into O’Malley’s body. Durell jumped, caught Kronin as the bald man swung about, struck at Kronin’s throat, struck again. There could be only one answer to this moment. One of them had to die. It had been a long time coming. Kronin’s grin was fixed and unnatural. He stepped back, staggering, as Durell tried to free his own weapon in the close quarters of the stairwell. Kronin’s metal leg came up in a savage kick that sent shocking pain up through Durell’s belly. They grappled, slammed against the iron railing. Kronin gasped as Durell drove his forearm across the man’s throat; then a grin of triumph widened his mouth as he brought up his metal knee. But Durell knew of the weapon concealed there now. He caught the man’s leg, heaved, and drove his weight against Kronin’s upper body. Abruptly Kronin went over the rail. Durell caught himself just in time to keep from going after him. He clung to the iron webbing with his last strength, watching Kronin fall the long distance down to the stone floor below. The body bounced once, and then didn’t move. Kronin’s neck and back looked broken.

Turning, he saw that the second Chinese had flung down his gun, and Durell knocked up Milan’s weapon as Joey started to shoot him. “We’ll need that one,” Durell said hoarsely.

It had all taken less than ten seconds.

Silence drifted back in the room. He straightened slowly. He looked at Gabriella and felt a great weight descend upon him, a thick exhaustion, and a sense of loss.

“Are you all right?”

Her mouth shook. “Yes. But O’Malley—”

“Zio?”

“Yes,” said the old man.

“Then let’s go down and hear you give orders to your men. You’re the chief again.”

The girl cried out, “But O’Malley is—!”

Durell checked her and went down first. His wounded shoulder was bleeding again. He felt as if he had been struck across the stomach with the flat of a board. Every step hurt. Bruno followed him slowly, and Joey Milan kept the surviving Chinese under guard. The Chinese was sputtering something about diplomatic rights, but Durell paid no attention. He took Gabriella’s hand and forced her to go down with him.

Kronin was dead. It would be a relief, Durell thought dimly, to close that file, at last. . . .

Zio took command in a matter of minutes. As soon as he could, Durell went back up the stairs to look at O’Malley. There were bullet holes in O’Malley’s chest, and it was a miracle the man still breathed. He knelt beside his boyhood friend and touched O’Malley’s throat for a pulse, and O’Malley opened his pale eyes. They looked dreamy, staring at something far, far away.

“Cajun?”

“I’m here, Frank.”

“Is Gabriella—?”

“She’s all right. Not hurt, thanks to you.”

“I made—a lot of mistakes—but not that one.”

“It’s all over now.”

“All my fault, though—I didn’t think—when I cut out on you in Naples—”

Gabriella stared at the dying man with wide, dry eyes. A group of armed men came running back up the stairs to the tower. A sharp order from Zio checked them. They stared at the old man and lowered their arms. O’Malley coughed, and blood gushed over his lower lip.

“Cajun, remember the time—we were kids—remember how it was—”

“I remember, O’Malley.”

“Take Gabriella—with you—”

“Yes.”

O’Malley looked at the girl and tried to give her his old reckless grin.

A moment later Durell bent and picked him up in his arms and walked out into the moonlit night. Gabriella followed silently.

“I’ll take you home, Gabriella, as he asked,” Durell said. He looked down at the burden he carried. “I’ll take O’Malley, too.”

HE BURIED O’Malley in Rome. O’Malley had no family, no relatives anywhere. It seemed the best thing to do. The sun shone with gentle warmth as Durell and Gabriella, the only mourners, left the cemetery. The girl had worn a simple black dress for the ceremony and still had not wept. She had spoken little on the flight from Palermo, and Durell had not pressed for her future plans.

In Rome he used the K Section Central facilities to dictate a report to Thompson, in Geneva, and a relay message to London and Washington. Thompson told him that Colonel Mignon’s and Amos Rand’s deaths in Switzerland had been explained to Swiss Security. There would be no publicity. Kronin’s sabotage plans and the lists of Kronin’s men planted in the Fratelli della Notte were in the hands of the F.B.I. The saboteurs were being rounded up. K Section was letting the Bureau take credit for the sweep.

Thompson had flown down from Geneva that day. He looked wryly amused as he read Durell’s reports.

“A pity about O’Malley. What about the other two— ah—sinners? Mr. Brutelli and Mr. Milan—”

“Bruno’s shoulder will mend,” Durell told him. “He decided to stay in Palermo. He likes the food there.”

“And Joey Milan?”

“He’ll work for Zio. He can get a jockey’s license in Sicily, but he said he wanted to work with Zio’s horses. Breeding them for the track and so forth. I doubt if we’ll see either man again. And McElroy is squaring things with the Italian authorities.”

Thompson cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about O’Malley, really.”

“It happened,” Durell said. “He did what he thought he had to do. We owe him a great deal.”

“And the girl?”

“I don’t know what to do about her yet.” “Awkward,” Thompson said. “You see, I’ve gotten leave from Washington to return Deirdre Padgett to Rome. Just so you could have a few days with her before you go back to report to Dickinson McFee. Deirdre is your—ah—?”

“My girl, yes,” Durell said.

“Well, I’m sure you can handle it. She’ll arrive tonight. Leonardo da Vinci Airport, Flight two-one-two.” 

“That’s fine,” Durell said. “It will help.”

From the cemetery where he had buried O’Malley he took a taxi with Gabriella to the Borghese Gardens and walked with her under the trees and across the quiet lawns. Children played, nurses pushed perambulators, and traffic hummed along the curving drives. The sky was warm and cloudless. Gabriella walked half a pace ahead of him, her blonde head bowed slightly. Durell told her about Deirdre, speaking quietly, and how he planned to meet her at the airport that evening. Gabriella listened in pale silence as he explained how very special Deirdre was to him.

“We’ve been apart for some time,” he said. “I’ve missed her very much.”

Gabriella said nothing. But he could not let her long silence go on. He touched her arm as they walked together through the green park. “Gabriella?”

She looked up at him, her face small and piquant. “What is it, Sam?”

“I understand how you felt about O’Malley—”

“But you do
not
understand. I thought—I am not experienced in such things. I thought I loved him. He was strange to me, and exciting, and—different from all I had ever known. But I know now that I did not love him. His life could never be mine, you see.”

“Then why didn’t you stay with Zio?”

“That is not my life, either. It is time I stopped being a little girl about all that, is it not?”

“Then what will you do?”

She turned to face him, standing on the garden walk, her body small and slim and straight in the dappled sunlight that sifted down like golden dust through the tall trees. Traffic hummed from a drive nearby. Birds called in the shrubbery. It was difficult to believe they were in the heart of Rome. She smiled and reached up to touch his face. Then suddenly she laughed and hugged him and buried her face against his chest. Abruptly she drew back with a small sound of self-reproach.

“I am sorry. I forgot. You are recovering from a wound in your shoulder.”

“It’s much better now.”

“Sam, you must not worry about me. I know you love this girl, this Deirdre, who is coming to Rome tonight. It is all right. For a time, it is true, I thought I was in love with you, myself. But—” She shook her head and smiled again. “I am going home, Sam.” 

“Where is that?”

“The Vanini circus, of course. That is where I belong. That is the life I know and love. I shall go back there and wait—wait for life to touch me again. The next time I shall know better what to do.”

Durell stared down gravely into her eyes. Then he nodded and took her hand, and they walked together to find a taxi.